


Once Upon a Pawn

by KissTheBoy7



Category: Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Aromantic, Chess, F/M, Friendship, Gen, aromantic!florence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:12:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissTheBoy7/pseuds/KissTheBoy7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Princess Florence has a new secret admirer; but for once, she doesn't want to push them out the window.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a Pawn

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my rad friend Emily Neckwear for ficmas 2013, but I really liked it so I'm posting it here.

Once upon a time there was a princess named Florence, who lived in the highest room of the tallest tower of a ridiculously easy-to-climb building in Manhattan.

She was the lost princess of a land far, far away – across the ocean and across borders that she thought, frankly, were a little bit arbitrary; boys came to her, young and arrogant princes, from all over Manhattan from the time she was young to the present, at seventeen. They scaled her tower and peeked into her window while she was changing, leering. Some chose even to brave the twin dragons who guarded her home, but all were turned away at the door.

They brought her gifts, often flowers and ribbons and other such nonsense.

Florence did not have the patience for teenaged boys, however, nor for love. She had better things to do – polishing her nails, for example, and writing papers for the local university. To be married would be an awful waste of her time, and childbearing even worse.

One night, however, when she was letting her hair down for the day with her blinds drawn carefully shut, there came a knock at her window; that in itself was not unusual, but for once, there were no suitors for her to push to their deaths when she flung the window open.

There was, however, a note.

She stared at the small envelope warily for a minute, and when it was apparent that there were no tricks to this, reached out carefully to the ledge to grasp it. It was very thin, for a love letter, and she almost doubted that there was anything inside.

There was, in fact, a single slip of paper. It read:

_White pawn to A4_

Florence blinked down incredulously and glanced once more at the window, where the curtains billowed innocently. There was not a soul in sight. She couldn’t fathom who might have left her such a note. Still, there was a table set up in the corner; she read the note twice more, searching for some hidden clue or perhaps traces of invisible ink, before wandering to the set and moving the white pawn to the designated square.

Nothing happened.

She stared at it for so long, with such intensity, that she felt a little foolish. Her fingers danced over the heads of the black pieces – she slid a pawn forward by one square and turned the scrap of paper over, searching for a pen. Her cursive was neat and tidy in comparison to the scrawl on the front.

_Black pawn to B6_

Glancing about furtively, she slid the paper back into the envelope and sealed it shut with a sticker from her desk, setting back on the ledge outside her window. To be sure it would not blow away she placed a small paperweight atop it.

She went to bed with a strange feeling of excitement stirring in the pits of her stomach.

*

The next morning she woke in jittery anticipation and went to the window, still dressed only in her nightgown; it was a risk she was willing to take, in her impatience. The envelope was exactly as she had left it, trapped beneath the paperweight; she frowned, disappointment twisting in her throat, but before she could shut the window again a small tear in the envelope’s exterior caught her eye.

Hastily, she leaned out to retrieve it, heart skipping when she peeked inside and saw that there was another scrap of paper to join the first. The familiar scrawl returned; she imagined a cheeky smile on a stranger’s face, accompanying it.

_Knight to F3_

_your move princess._

She couldn’t bring herself to be upset by the lack of proper punctuation, so relieved she was to see that her mysterious friend had returned. This interested her much more than talk of princes and marriage, or hand-holding, or even of the complex economical concepts that she wrote of in her school papers. To have a friend was her only wish, and one that had gone so long neglected that she had almost forgotten it.

With the morning breeze stirring her hair, still in a bird’s nest from that night’s fitful dreaming, she fumbled for her favorite pen and scratched out a reply in her neat script. She set the envelope carefully back beneath the paperweight, biting her lip before she had to part with it. Her hands were slow and unwilling as they closed the window once more and drew the curtains, so that none of her suitors might glimpse her naked.

Florence went about her day, only half-aware of her surroundings. (which always remained the same) By nightfall she had pondered all that she could ponder; she checked the envelope several times throughout the day, but she had yet to receive a reply.

She was beginning to think that her faceless friend had abandoned her.

But her patience, however thin it had grown, was to be rewarded; shortly before bed that evening, with the stars glimmering brightly above, there was a quick tapping at her window. She flung it open in excitement, only to be met with a pig-nosed boy, smiling at her sultrily.

“Hey, princess –”

“Oh, get away – I am not looking for _you.”_ She gave him a hard shove and watched his eyes widen as he lost his grip, falling the short distance to the bushes beneath her window. His whimpering grated on her nerves; she checked for the envelope, and lo and behold, she had her reply.

“Thank you,” she whispered to no one, and the moon smiled kindly in return.

*

For weeks it continued that way; every morning and every night, there would be another move to make, another note from her fast friend, who went simply by a small symbol of a crown, minutely detailed. She laughed when her friend told her, sarcastically, to call them ‘Your Majesty’ – she had a feeling that they had no interest in her royalty at all, for princes all wanted the same things from her.

This person, whoever they were, was not after her virginity (which she saw no use for, anyways) or her hand, but rather, her mind.

If they had been after her heart, they would have been sorely disappointed. Florence had been told countless times that she did not have a heart; that she was cold, indifferent, and withered where other girls were lush and smiled prettily as they allowed themselves to be wooed. She certainly didn’t believe herself to be cold, nor indifferent, but there was something that she felt she couldn’t identify with in all of these lovely fairy tales. Some element that she would never empathize with, nor did she really want to.

Their letters became longer and longer as the game progressed, and Florence grew to fear the end of it. It was irrational, but some part of her believed that perhaps _all_ that her friend was interested in was her mind – despite their queries, endless and fascinated, of her life, her thoughts, her dreams, she wondered (perhaps paranoid) if the stranger might beat her, that they would lose interest and find some other scholar to write to.

As such, she threw herself into the task of winning; in every spare moment, between assignments and composition of letters, she thought intensely of the war raging on the board at the corner of her room.

Her friend seemed to sense the tension in her mind. One night, with only five pieces left on the board, they inquired about the state of her health. The question seemed almost worried; the ink was smudged, having barely dried before she had retrieved the note but she forced herself not to peer out the window in search, for it was clear that her friend did not want to be seen. She sighed, and wrote back in half-truths.

_I am feeling a bit under the weather, but I assure you, it is no serious malady._

The window was shut once more, and she had barely crossed the room when she heard the sound of scraping shoes; she froze, hardly daring to breathe, and when the knock sounded she flung herself across the room in her excitement. Her friend was only a dark shape ducking around the corner, but still, it gave more form to them than words on a page. They had never returned twice in one night before – she stared out, almost longing, before looking down at the scribble before her. It was messier than usual.

_Sickness of the mind is the most dangerous, milady._

She wrinkled her nose, glaring halfheartedly at the site of the shape’s disappearance. _Milady._ Someone was feeling sardonic tonight. She took her pen from it’s place beside the windowsill and wrote out a careful reply.

_Are you questioning my sanity? How rude._

_Aren’t you going to make your move? Or is this your way of forfeiting your crown?_

The next reply was even swifter than the first, and as forcedly casual as it was, every smeared word rang with urgency. Florence fought a smile as she read.

_you’d be the first to beat me_

_I’m distracted_

_give me a break_

This time, the shadow lingered, watching back at her; she wished that there were a light that she could turn on and banish the darkness so that she could finally look upon the face of her dearest friend in the world.

_You’re stalling._

_Distracted by what. Me? Flattery will get you nowhere._

The temptation to wait, to peer between the curtains and catch a glimpse of her friend, was great but she resisted; she turned to her bed and waited, arms crossed and heart hot in her chest, the adrenaline buzzing in her veins similar to that of reading a good book – one about adventures, of magical friends, of swordfights and impossible odds. There seemed so much at stake, tonight; she had a paper due tomorrow, but there was no time to think of it now, only of her friend whose hurried scribbling she could hear with her ears pricked so.

With her hands miraculously steady, she opened the envelope and slid out the note. It read, simply:

_liar_

_could I meet you?_

“Yes,” she called down without thinking, and cursed herself as it rang in the cooling night air. The desk click read 3:46 – she should be in bed, or studying at the very least, and now she had probably scared her fabled friend away for good.

“Only if you want –” she began anxiously, but the shape was moving swiftly toward the base of the building again, scaling the wall nimbly. She stepped back from the sill in alarm, hand pressed to her chest, staring as a shaggy head emerged. Blue eyes gleamed back at her in the candlelight, nervously; the nose and mouth remained below the sill, still a mystery.

“…Bishop A5. Check.”

It was a deeper voice than she had expected; she blinked, belatedly nodding, and felt a smile begin to bloom across her face. She extended her hand.

“Come in. It’s cold,” she invited, and after a moment the boy bobbed his head in agreement, taking her hand in his and allowing her to help him up and inside. He was dressed in dirty jeans and a white t-shirt, evidently not nearly as well-off as herself. She paused when she realized that she was looking him up and down, narrowing her eyes at his raised eyebrow. He snorted, amused.

“Aren’t you going to make your move, princess?” He tightened his hand around hers, however, as though sure that she would flee if he let go. She closed her other around it, squeezing reassuringly. He was taller than she had anticipated and she had to look up to meet his eyes.

“There’s plenty of time for that.” She had a feeling that it would be a long time before they would separate again, if at all. “Won’t you stay a while?”

He dropped his pretenses, looking at her with shining eyes – _oh, no._ “You want me to?”

There was no way to backtrack now. Her gut twisted uneasily. “W-what’s your name?” Perhaps she could distract him while she thought of what to do, what to say. How to let him down, after all of this time. She should have known.

“Freddie,” he supplied readily, gnawing his lip. He took note of the faint twist in her expression, grimacing. “… What’d I do? I can’t have pissed you off already –”

“Freddie,” she began slowly. “Freddie, if you’re looking for… for something… you know…”

He shakes his head vigorously, eagerly. “No – please. I just want to be here. Please, let me stay.”

“But Freddie…”

Love was not something that Florence knew how to handle, not without a sigh and a shove and a slam of her window. She couldn’t give it back to him, not in the way that he must be hoping; she didn’t even know if she could accept it from him in the first place.

Freddie’s eyes gleamed. “I swear, I won’t bother you.”

She didn’t want him to leave, not really. Not yet. (not ever) It was too bitter a pill to swallow – just when she had found a friend! Was there no one who could be content with friendship? With reading, and chess and simple touching, with kind words and banter?

Freddie, though, had been content with all of those things… There was no reason to assume that he would ask for more, now.

Her fingers tightened painfully around his. “I doubt that,” she murmured, but she was beginning to smile again.

He positively beamed, and shook himself loose to turn and look for the chessboard. “What do you say we finish this game?”

She won, in the end, and he pouted for the rest of the night to her great amusement; in the morning she awoke twined with him in bed, warm and more comfortable than she had ever been sleeping alone, and found that she didn’t mind. In the coming months he would kiss her, sometimes, lazily and on the mouth or the shoulder or her navel, (or sometimes even lower…) and with her fingers twisted in his hair, she told him that she loved him very much, and in a sense it was true.

Perhaps love in the sense she’d been imagining wasn’t really necessary, in the grand scheme of things.

She had found her partner anyways.


End file.
